December 20, 2023 • 18 mins
I still remember the day when algebra went from being my nemesis to my ally, a transformation that wouldn't have been possible without a firm grasp of basic math. Now, I want to help you navigate the same challenges, as we explore the impact of foundational skills on mastering algebra. In the heart of our discussion, I take you back to my high school special education teaching days, sharing firsthand insights into how students' struggles with fundamental math operations can create barriers to grasping more complex mathematical concepts. Together, we'll confront the sobering reality facing today's students and the educational system, emphasizing the urgent need to prioritize these critical skills for academic success.
As the episode winds down, I can't help but look forward to the upcoming break, and I'm sure you're feeling the same. Sending out a wave of tranquility to all of you hard workers out there, I hope this episode leaves you feeling prepared to tackle the challenges ahead and then unwind in the peace of your well-deserved time off. Keep that coffee strong and your spirits higher. Wishing you all a restful pause from the daily grind, we'll reunite on the other side, refreshed and ready to satisfy our shared curiosity once more. Thank you for sharing this journey with me, and remember to cherish the calm that comes with a break well earned.
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Links Mentioned in the Show:
https://teachingstrugglinglearners.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Did you like algebra?
I was thinking about it theother day and algebra is.
It is such a milestone, isn'tit?
It really is.
It's thought of as the you know, multi-very difficult math,
right?
I mean it's.
You know, why are you making medo algebra?
That's one of the things wethink about.
(00:22):
It's very much seen as thisvery, very difficult math, but
also it is a rite of passage,right?
It's?
You do algebra in high schooland everybody takes algebra in
high school.
That's just kind of one of the,the givens, right.
(00:43):
When you're talking to you knowparents, when you're talking to
your friends, it's yeah, well,I had to take algebra and
algebra was so hard or algebrawas so easy, whatever it was,
algebra, algebra, algebra, andit very much is a rite of
passage, right, if you don'ttake algebra in junior high,
(01:03):
you're going to take it in highschool.
And but the fact is, whereas itused to be seen as a very, it
was a difficult topic, it was a,it was a difficult concept.
But algebra is not easy.
It really takes some thoughtand work and practice.
(01:24):
But now kids are really, reallystruggling with it and they're
not passing.
They're not even close topassing.
Now, some people may not know,I didn't know.
It absolutely shocked me toknow and to find out that in
some states, to pass the likeend of course, eoc, you know,
(01:48):
for algebra, the kids only hadto have, they only had to earn a
25% so they could get 75% wrongand so pass the state test.
And yet the number of studentsthat had to retake the algebra
(02:10):
and, of course, exam the statetest was a lot.
It was way too many, way, way,way too many, knowing that the
kids only had to get a fourth ofthe problems Right.
And so, yeah, I think we'regoing to talk about some algebra
today.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling
Learners.
I'm a boy mom and a veteranteacher.
You're listening to theReaching Struggling Learners
podcast, where we talk all abouthelping students succeed
academically, socially andbehaviorally.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So going back in time , you know, to the before times,
the dark ages, I'm really notthat old, but I feel that old
right now.
I'm talking about high schooland sitting in my Algebra I
class.
In high school I personally didnot find Algebra that difficult
compared to a lot of my peers.
(03:26):
Now I had a pretty good Algebrateacher.
But more importantly, I nowrecognize that I had a really
solid foundation in the basicskills for math.
So going into Algebra I didn'thave to spend as much time
(03:48):
figuring out why the problemworked and how it worked and all
that stuff.
I could move on to being ableto use the formulas and all that
stuff to apply it to theproblems and all that.
So because I had thosefoundational skills that were
(04:12):
just by that time, because I wasso used to it, it almost felt
innate that you know, I knew myaddition facts, my
multiplication facts.
I knew it and it didn'tintimidate me when I saw them
within the Algebra problembecause I already had it.
That was, that was done.
(04:33):
That was the easy part.
It was the application that wasdifficult, whereas a lot of my
friends had to really thinkthrough the process a little bit
more because they didn't it.
Just they didn't have as muchpractice with the skills and it
wasn't.
It didn't come as easily tothem because they didn't have
(04:56):
the opportunity to practicethose skills earlier on, in
elementary school and middleschool.
And so, looking back on thatnow and applying it to where we
are today with education and andthe struggles that a lot of our
students are having in mathspecifically, it is so important
(05:18):
for us to make sure that thefoundational skills for our
students are truly masteredbefore we move on.
I saw that as a high schoolstudent.
I didn't realize it at the time, obviously, because I didn't
have, you know, I didn't have aprefrontal cortex yet, I was
still a child.
But now, as an adult and, moreimportantly, as a teacher, I can
(05:43):
see and I'll share someexamples in a moment, but I can
really see how vital that was tomy own success in a fairly
difficult subject.
I saw, like I said, I saw itagain when I worked for two
years as a high school specialeducation teacher.
(06:04):
My students, they, theystruggled with ELA and they
struggled with math,specifically algebra.
That algebra, you know, like Isaid, that is a milestone it is.
You got to get through algebraand that was.
That was the toughest subjectfor them.
It just hands down ELA, readingand math were the toughest
(06:31):
subjects for them and because ofthat I I did a lot of
conferences with the ELA and themath teachers and of course I'm
focusing right now on math,obviously.
So we'll talk about my, myconferences, my conferences with
those math teachers.
They really just revealed thatthe students not being able to
(06:56):
know they're, they're just basicmath facts, and I'm talking.
Addition, I'm not talking, I'mnot even going into
multiplication.
These students were strugglingso much they would get caught up
in problems like seven pluseight and because that wasn't,
(07:17):
they didn't have theautomaticity with it, they would
get caught on that part of theproblem and then the rest of it
they would forget the othersteps that they had to take.
And so, not having thatconfidence, not having that
skill, really it took so muchbrain power for them to do the,
(07:41):
the simple parts, that the morecomplex, the larger problem just
got lost completely intranslation and the teachers
would would just, they were justbanging their heads against the
wall because algebra teacher,geometry teacher, algebra
teacher, algebra, two teachers,all these, all these teachers,
(08:02):
college math teachers, weresitting there telling me how,
asking, asking how am I supposedto help them be able to do this
multiple step problem with thisformula and help them to
understand how to do thesethings when they're struggling
with seven plus eight?
And that's a legitimatequestion.
(08:24):
I, that is a legitimatequestion.
And you know what, now that Ithink about it, there were
multiple meetings that I've hadwith fifth grade teachers that
they're banging their headsagainst the wall because how in
the world am I supposed to teachthese kids, you know, all these
more advanced concepts whenthey're struggling, when they're
(08:44):
spending so much time doing thebasic stuff, the basics, the
very basics of addition,subtraction.
And the fact is we have accepted, as as a teaching community, we
have accepted this wisdom inmath, the drill and kill right,
(09:07):
that we should not be doing factfluency, we should not be doing
these things, that this is bad,that it it kills kids
motivation and their confidencein math and all these things.
And I'm going to say the thingthat we showed it, that I
shouldn't say we need to nipthem the bud.
That needs to stop right now.
(09:29):
No, we don't have to put thestar chart up on the wall to
show who's the best math factperson because you know, okay,
it hurts some of the studentsfeelings.
I understand that and in a lotof ways I support.
You know, maybe it should be apersonal work.
(09:49):
You know, maybe the studentscould, you know, track that
personally.
But we still need to teach thekids the facts.
They still need to learn thefact fluency, because I'll tell
you right now it's not working.
What we're doing right now isnot working.
When they get to algebra,that's not working.
(10:11):
When they get into pre algebra,it's not working.
When they get to geometry,those teachers, those poor
algebra and geometry teachers,they are ripping their house if
they have any hair left.
After all of the shenaniganshas been put on the last few
years for teachers, if thosepoor teachers have any hair left
, it's gray and it's beingripped out because there's no
(10:36):
way there really is, there is noway to teach those advanced
math concepts when the kids arestill working on seven plus
eight.
And so we have got to nip thisin the bud.
This whole drilling, killshenanigans.
We can find.
We are teachers, we areteachers.
(10:56):
We can find ways to make itinclusive.
We can find ways to build upkids confidence.
And the fact is, what betterway to build a kids confidence
than to have them practice askill and master it.
What better way than for themto keep their own little chart
(11:17):
that shows, week by week, howmany more math facts they're
able to do in a minute?
That's, that is confidence.
Right there, that is themastery of a skill.
That is a child looking at thatthemselves and going I did that
.
And that's what the kids need.
They don't need to keep tryingto figure out the math facts on
(11:39):
the fingers.
They need to know that sevenplus eight is 15.
They need to know it.
And yeah, I'm passionate aboutthis because the fact is, it's,
it's.
We're hurting our own kids.
We are so and if I lose people,if I lose you over this, I'm
(12:02):
sorry.
No, I'm not.
No, I'm not, because the factis, sometimes we got to say what
we got to say and here we are.
It is 2023, almost 2024.
And we all acknowledge that.
What is happening?
That the kids getting into highschool?
They're not prepared.
(12:23):
We know that.
We know that we're not kiddingourselves anymore.
We got teachers on TikToksaying that the students can't
spell the word because whenthey're in eighth grade it's not
working.
It's time that we take thegloves off and we start saying
the hard things.
The hard thing is we were wrong.
It wasn't teachers, it waspeople on high.
(12:46):
I know that, but we're the onesin the classroom.
We're the ones who are lookingat our students.
It's time to nip that wholedrill and kill idea in the bud
and start doing some drilling.
We need to start working onsome fact fluency.
The fact is, kids can't do basicfacts.
If they can't do the basicfacts, they're having trouble.
(13:09):
They can't do problems withmultiple steps.
There's only so much brainpower that anyone has you and I,
as intelligent as we aresitting here, as adults who are
able to drive cars and,hopefully, who has really
honestly balanced a checkbook ina while but you know what I
(13:32):
mean.
We're able to do that.
You know what?
We figure out how much we canspend in a grocery, and that's
kind of difficult these days.
We're intelligent adults.
We would have a hard timetrying to figure out a multiple
step problem if every single oneof those steps was something
(13:56):
that was real difficult for usto do, was something that we
didn't know how to do.
We have to move on to that.
Okay.
Everybody says, well, they havecalculators, they have
calculators?
They do.
They do have calculators andthey still get it wrong because
they're putting in the wronginformation.
(14:16):
And they don't understand whyit's wrong.
Because they're spending somuch of their time putting that,
trying to figure out the smallstuff to put it into the
calculator, and their answer isalways well, it's what the
calculator said.
It has to be right.
Because they don't understandthe process, because they don't
(14:37):
have the basic foundationalskills.
You got to have the basicfoundational skills, pemdals.
They have to understand allthat stuff.
It has to be something thatthey can work through to do it
right, to put in the calculatorthe right way so that they can
get the right answer.
I kind of just said it, butlike.
(14:59):
An example of this is the orderof operations.
You have several steps.
You got to know the right orderof things.
If you punch in the calculator,you got to be wrong.
If you just punch it in exactlyas it is, you're going to be
wrong.
When you're teaching kids orderof operations, their brain is
trying to figure out which oneof these steps do I do first,
(15:22):
but if in the middle of thatthey're trying to figure out
what seven plus eight is, I'llgo back to seven plus eight,
because it's one of my favorites.
But if they're trying to figurethat out they get lost.
They get lost in that part ofit and then the order of
operations goes right out oftheir brain because it's too
much.
The brain can only handle somuch at a time, so much
(15:46):
processing, and so for theirsake we have to start working on
that fluency stuff.
And that's the reality.
One of the key problems withalgebra, with those scores and
the lack of success in algebra,is a lack of fact fluency.
(16:08):
It results in a lack ofconfidence and comfort in math.
If you're not confident inbasic math facts.
If a kid is sitting there myown son is an example of that
Nine years old we had to go backand we had to work more on math
fact fluency, on additionfluency, because his confidence
(16:32):
in that wasn't good enough andwhen he was trying to do more
difficult problems he wasstruggling, he was second
guessing himself because hewasn't confident in his answers.
He it wasn't mastered.
And if that skill, theprerequisite skill, isn't
(16:54):
mastered, moving on is so muchmore difficult.
But we're moving kids on, andon, and on, and on and on before
they've mastered those basicskills.
We've got to go back.
We have to do it, guys.
So I want to encourage you tothink about ways, no matter what
(17:19):
level you're at.
Think about ways that you canstart hitting those basic
foundational skills for yourstudents in math.
And no, we don't want to breaktheir confidence.
No, we don't want to say, hey,guys, because you can't do
addition facts, you can't doword problems, you can't do
order of operations, blah, blah,blah, blah.
(17:40):
We're not going to do that.
We're teachers, we know better.
We're not going to put the starcharts up to make Bobby feel
bad, because you know Jeremiahis able to do all his facts and
Bobby can't.
We're not.
We're absolutely not going todo that.
We're not going to beat ourstudents down.
The world does that enough forus.
We do not want to do that more,but we can find ways.
(18:03):
Especially when we worktogether, we can find ways to
build our students up whilebuilding up their basic
foundational skills.
I mean, we're teachers, we cando anything.
In the meantime, I hope, beyondall hope, that you have an
absolutely wonderful break.
(18:25):
I hope that your break hasstarted.
If it hasn't, ooh, I am sorry.
That's just wrong, but I hopethat it has.
And until next time.
May your coffee be strong, yourstudents calm and your break
started immediately.
Bye your break, until next time, thanks you.
Did you like algebra?
I was thinking about it theother day and algebra is.
It is such a milestone, isn'tit?
It really is.
It's thought of as the you know, multi-very difficult math,
right?
I mean it's.
You know, why are you making medo algebra?
That's one of the things wethink about.
(00:22):
It's very much seen as thisvery, very difficult math, but
also it is a rite of passage,right?
It's?
You do algebra in high schooland everybody takes algebra in
high school.
That's just kind of one of the,the givens, right.
(00:43):
When you're talking to you knowparents, when you're talking to
your friends, it's yeah, well,I had to take algebra and
algebra was so hard or algebrawas so easy, whatever it was,
algebra, algebra, algebra, andit very much is a rite of
passage, right, if you don'ttake algebra in junior high,
(01:03):
you're going to take it in highschool.
And but the fact is, whereas itused to be seen as a very, it
was a difficult topic, it was a,it was a difficult concept.
But algebra is not easy.
It really takes some thoughtand work and practice.
(01:24):
But now kids are really, reallystruggling with it and they're
not passing.
They're not even close topassing.
Now, some people may not know,I didn't know.
It absolutely shocked me toknow and to find out that in
some states, to pass the likeend of course, eoc, you know,
(01:48):
for algebra, the kids only hadto have, they only had to earn a
25% so they could get 75% wrongand so pass the state test.
And yet the number of studentsthat had to retake the algebra
(02:10):
and, of course, exam the statetest was a lot.
It was way too many, way, way,way too many, knowing that the
kids only had to get a fourth ofthe problems Right.
And so, yeah, I think we'regoing to talk about some algebra
today.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling
Learners.
I'm a boy mom and a veteranteacher.
You're listening to theReaching Struggling Learners
podcast, where we talk all abouthelping students succeed
academically, socially andbehaviorally.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So going back in time , you know, to the before times,
the dark ages, I'm really notthat old, but I feel that old
right now.
I'm talking about high schooland sitting in my Algebra I
class.
In high school I personally didnot find Algebra that difficult
compared to a lot of my peers.
(03:26):
Now I had a pretty good Algebrateacher.
But more importantly, I nowrecognize that I had a really
solid foundation in the basicskills for math.
So going into Algebra I didn'thave to spend as much time
(03:48):
figuring out why the problemworked and how it worked and all
that stuff.
I could move on to being ableto use the formulas and all that
stuff to apply it to theproblems and all that.
So because I had thosefoundational skills that were
(04:12):
just by that time, because I wasso used to it, it almost felt
innate that you know, I knew myaddition facts, my
multiplication facts.
I knew it and it didn'tintimidate me when I saw them
within the Algebra problembecause I already had it.
That was, that was done.
(04:33):
That was the easy part.
It was the application that wasdifficult, whereas a lot of my
friends had to really thinkthrough the process a little bit
more because they didn't it.
Just they didn't have as muchpractice with the skills and it
wasn't.
It didn't come as easily tothem because they didn't have
(04:56):
the opportunity to practicethose skills earlier on, in
elementary school and middleschool.
And so, looking back on thatnow and applying it to where we
are today with education and andthe struggles that a lot of our
students are having in mathspecifically, it is so important
(05:18):
for us to make sure that thefoundational skills for our
students are truly masteredbefore we move on.
I saw that as a high schoolstudent.
I didn't realize it at the time, obviously, because I didn't
have, you know, I didn't have aprefrontal cortex yet, I was
still a child.
But now, as an adult and, moreimportantly, as a teacher, I can
(05:43):
see and I'll share someexamples in a moment, but I can
really see how vital that was tomy own success in a fairly
difficult subject.
I saw, like I said, I saw itagain when I worked for two
years as a high school specialeducation teacher.
(06:04):
My students, they, theystruggled with ELA and they
struggled with math,specifically algebra.
That algebra, you know, like Isaid, that is a milestone it is.
You got to get through algebraand that was.
That was the toughest subjectfor them.
It just hands down ELA, readingand math were the toughest
(06:31):
subjects for them and because ofthat I I did a lot of
conferences with the ELA and themath teachers and of course I'm
focusing right now on math,obviously.
So we'll talk about my, myconferences, my conferences with
those math teachers.
They really just revealed thatthe students not being able to
(06:56):
know they're, they're just basicmath facts, and I'm talking.
Addition, I'm not talking, I'mnot even going into
multiplication.
These students were strugglingso much they would get caught up
in problems like seven pluseight and because that wasn't,
(07:17):
they didn't have theautomaticity with it, they would
get caught on that part of theproblem and then the rest of it
they would forget the othersteps that they had to take.
And so, not having thatconfidence, not having that
skill, really it took so muchbrain power for them to do the,
(07:41):
the simple parts, that the morecomplex, the larger problem just
got lost completely intranslation and the teachers
would would just, they were justbanging their heads against the
wall because algebra teacher,geometry teacher, algebra
teacher, algebra, two teachers,all these, all these teachers,
(08:02):
college math teachers, weresitting there telling me how,
asking, asking how am I supposedto help them be able to do this
multiple step problem with thisformula and help them to
understand how to do thesethings when they're struggling
with seven plus eight?
And that's a legitimatequestion.
(08:24):
I, that is a legitimatequestion.
And you know what, now that Ithink about it, there were
multiple meetings that I've hadwith fifth grade teachers that
they're banging their headsagainst the wall because how in
the world am I supposed to teachthese kids, you know, all these
more advanced concepts whenthey're struggling, when they're
(08:44):
spending so much time doing thebasic stuff, the basics, the
very basics of addition,subtraction.
And the fact is we have accepted, as as a teaching community, we
have accepted this wisdom inmath, the drill and kill right,
(09:07):
that we should not be doing factfluency, we should not be doing
these things, that this is bad,that it it kills kids
motivation and their confidencein math and all these things.
And I'm going to say the thingthat we showed it, that I
shouldn't say we need to nipthem the bud.
That needs to stop right now.
(09:29):
No, we don't have to put thestar chart up on the wall to
show who's the best math factperson because you know, okay,
it hurts some of the studentsfeelings.
I understand that and in a lotof ways I support.
You know, maybe it should be apersonal work.
(09:49):
You know, maybe the studentscould, you know, track that
personally.
But we still need to teach thekids the facts.
They still need to learn thefact fluency, because I'll tell
you right now it's not working.
What we're doing right now isnot working.
When they get to algebra,that's not working.
(10:11):
When they get into pre algebra,it's not working.
When they get to geometry,those teachers, those poor
algebra and geometry teachers,they are ripping their house if
they have any hair left.
After all of the shenaniganshas been put on the last few
years for teachers, if thosepoor teachers have any hair left
, it's gray and it's beingripped out because there's no
(10:36):
way there really is, there is noway to teach those advanced
math concepts when the kids arestill working on seven plus
eight.
And so we have got to nip thisin the bud.
This whole drilling, killshenanigans.
We can find.
We are teachers, we areteachers.
(10:56):
We can find ways to make itinclusive.
We can find ways to build upkids confidence.
And the fact is, what betterway to build a kids confidence
than to have them practice askill and master it.
What better way than for themto keep their own little chart
(11:17):
that shows, week by week, howmany more math facts they're
able to do in a minute?
That's, that is confidence.
Right there, that is themastery of a skill.
That is a child looking at thatthemselves and going I did that
.
And that's what the kids need.
They don't need to keep tryingto figure out the math facts on
(11:39):
the fingers.
They need to know that sevenplus eight is 15.
They need to know it.
And yeah, I'm passionate aboutthis because the fact is, it's,
it's.
We're hurting our own kids.
We are so and if I lose people,if I lose you over this, I'm
(12:02):
sorry.
No, I'm not.
No, I'm not, because the factis, sometimes we got to say what
we got to say and here we are.
It is 2023, almost 2024.
And we all acknowledge that.
What is happening?
That the kids getting into highschool?
They're not prepared.
(12:23):
We know that.
We know that we're not kiddingourselves anymore.
We got teachers on TikToksaying that the students can't
spell the word because whenthey're in eighth grade it's not
working.
It's time that we take thegloves off and we start saying
the hard things.
The hard thing is we were wrong.
It wasn't teachers, it waspeople on high.
(12:46):
I know that, but we're the onesin the classroom.
We're the ones who are lookingat our students.
It's time to nip that wholedrill and kill idea in the bud
and start doing some drilling.
We need to start working onsome fact fluency.
The fact is, kids can't do basicfacts.
If they can't do the basicfacts, they're having trouble.
(13:09):
They can't do problems withmultiple steps.
There's only so much brainpower that anyone has you and I,
as intelligent as we aresitting here, as adults who are
able to drive cars and,hopefully, who has really
honestly balanced a checkbook ina while but you know what I
(13:32):
mean.
We're able to do that.
You know what?
We figure out how much we canspend in a grocery, and that's
kind of difficult these days.
We're intelligent adults.
We would have a hard timetrying to figure out a multiple
step problem if every single oneof those steps was something
(13:56):
that was real difficult for usto do, was something that we
didn't know how to do.
We have to move on to that.
Okay.
Everybody says, well, they havecalculators, they have
calculators?
They do.
They do have calculators andthey still get it wrong because
they're putting in the wronginformation.
(14:16):
And they don't understand whyit's wrong.
Because they're spending somuch of their time putting that,
trying to figure out the smallstuff to put it into the
calculator, and their answer isalways well, it's what the
calculator said.
It has to be right.
Because they don't understandthe process, because they don't
(14:37):
have the basic foundationalskills.
You got to have the basicfoundational skills, pemdals.
They have to understand allthat stuff.
It has to be something thatthey can work through to do it
right, to put in the calculatorthe right way so that they can
get the right answer.
I kind of just said it, butlike.
(14:59):
An example of this is the orderof operations.
You have several steps.
You got to know the right orderof things.
If you punch in the calculator,you got to be wrong.
If you just punch it in exactlyas it is, you're going to be
wrong.
When you're teaching kids orderof operations, their brain is
trying to figure out which oneof these steps do I do first,
(15:22):
but if in the middle of thatthey're trying to figure out
what seven plus eight is, I'llgo back to seven plus eight,
because it's one of my favorites.
But if they're trying to figurethat out they get lost.
They get lost in that part ofit and then the order of
operations goes right out oftheir brain because it's too
much.
The brain can only handle somuch at a time, so much
(15:46):
processing, and so for theirsake we have to start working on
that fluency stuff.
And that's the reality.
One of the key problems withalgebra, with those scores and
the lack of success in algebra,is a lack of fact fluency.
(16:08):
It results in a lack ofconfidence and comfort in math.
If you're not confident inbasic math facts.
If a kid is sitting there myown son is an example of that
Nine years old we had to go backand we had to work more on math
fact fluency, on additionfluency, because his confidence
(16:32):
in that wasn't good enough andwhen he was trying to do more
difficult problems he wasstruggling, he was second
guessing himself because hewasn't confident in his answers.
He it wasn't mastered.
And if that skill, theprerequisite skill, isn't
(16:54):
mastered, moving on is so muchmore difficult.
But we're moving kids on, andon, and on, and on and on before
they've mastered those basicskills.
We've got to go back.
We have to do it, guys.
So I want to encourage you tothink about ways, no matter what
(17:19):
level you're at.
Think about ways that you canstart hitting those basic
foundational skills for yourstudents in math.
And no, we don't want to breaktheir confidence.
No, we don't want to say, hey,guys, because you can't do
addition facts, you can't doword problems, you can't do
order of operations, blah, blah,blah, blah.
(17:40):
We're not going to do that.
We're teachers, we know better.
We're not going to put the starcharts up to make Bobby feel
bad, because you know Jeremiahis able to do all his facts and
Bobby can't.
We're not.
We're absolutely not going todo that.
We're not going to beat ourstudents down.
The world does that enough forus.
We do not want to do that more,but we can find ways.
(18:03):
Especially when we worktogether, we can find ways to
build our students up whilebuilding up their basic
foundational skills.
I mean, we're teachers, we cando anything.
In the meantime, I hope, beyondall hope, that you have an
absolutely wonderful break.
(18:25):
I hope that your break hasstarted.
If it hasn't, ooh, I am sorry.
That's just wrong, but I hopethat it has.
And until next time.
May your coffee be strong, yourstudents calm and your break
started immediately.
Bye your break, until next time, thanks you.
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